Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese Paninis

I tend to make up recipes off the top of my head. Sometimes they don't turn out so well, and I feed them to the dog. But this tomato soup is so yummy and quick. You can hardly call it homemade since it uses a can of Campbell's, but you'd never know to taste it!

Pour the can of condensed tomato soup into a microwave-safe bowl. Fill the empty can with 3/4 chicken stock and 1/4 heavy cream. (I didn't say it would be low-fat!) Sprinkle in some basil, mint, onion powder, garlic salt, pepper, or whatever spices you like. Then just heat it until it's nice and steamy.

It so yummy! Perfect with a grilled cheese...I squished these on the panini press for an added crunch! So tasty on a cold winter day -- comfort food to the max!

How do you do it?

Okay, I'm wanting some input on marking up my new Bible. I recently purchased an ESV single-column reference Bible, which I love. The only think I don't love about it is the pages are rather thin and require some special pens in order not to bleed through. I have black, pink, orange, red, blue, purple, yellow, and green fine-tip pens. I have used various Bible-marking methods in the past, but a lot of them included a highlighter, which this particular Bible will not tolerate. How do you guys mark your Bibles...colors, symbols, just notes, etc? I'm all ears!

Game Day Potato Skins

Another yummy recipe from my test kitchen! While not low-cal, these are definitely scrumptious. Great for game day! Try them for yourself:

1) Give your potatoes a rub-down with a bit of canola oil and salt

2) Bake them in the oven at 450 for about 45 mins

- While the potatoes are baking, cook 1-2 slices of bacon per potato

3) Split the potatoes open and scoop out most of the insides

4) Brush the hollowed-out potatoes with oil and sprinkle on some more salt

5) Put them in the oven hollow-side down for about 7 minutes

6) Pull them out and fill them with a hearty amount of your favorite cheeses (I combined sharp cheddar, colby jack, and mozzarella)

7) Crumble the cooked bacon on top

8) Stick them back in the oven to let the cheese melt into bubbly goodness

9) Serve to your drooling guests before they rush the oven in a mad craze

10) Have some sour cream, ranch, and green onions on the side for good measure!

Cooking...Pioneer Style

So I tried Pioneer Woman's chicken parm, and boy was it good! And so easy...I prepped, cooked, and cleaned up the whole meal in about an hour. If you'd like to try your hand at it too (and you should...it's yummy!), you can find the step-by-step recipe here. If my co-workers were drooling over the microwaved left-overs in a plastic ziplock container, you can imagine how tasty it is! Try it out and let me know what you think, foodies!

Pioneer Woman

My sick computer has been healed! Well, actually I buried it in the backyard under the oak tree. But now I have a new (and very welcome) addition. I have now entered the Mac World, and am finding it a very nice place to be.

My new favorite place to wander in Mac World is the Pioneer Woman's

blog. I was first introduced to Ree through her cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks. She's a city-girl turned country-lover, homeschooling mother of four, and creative to the core. You should wander on over too!

I made her chocolate chip cookies for work the other day...yummy. They have a nice heaping teaspoon of instant coffee granules that give them that special little something. I'd post a picture of them if they weren't already gobbled up. Maybe next time...I've got my eye on her chicken parm right now. I think a trip to Wal-Mart may be in store for the day. So, while I head to the store, hop on over to visit the Pioneer Woman. But beware, you might drool a bit as you browse through her cooking section, so have a paper towel or bib handy!

Girls' Discipleship

After a long absence in the blogging world, (as a result of a sick computer stuck as an inpatient at Best Buy hospital for over 2 months) I have returned! I'm so exited to be starting up girls' discipleship again today. I'll be taking a small group of 10th-12th grade girls through Jerry Bridges' Respectable Sins, which I've heard is one of those great books that just gets you right where it hurts! Any one read it? Let me know what you thought. I'm praying that the Lord will use this book in each of our lives to change us into more holy imitators of Christ.

Lipstick on the Wall

When my brother was about 2 years old, he took my mom's lipstick out of her purse and "decorated" his room with it. It was everywhere...on the walls, his toybox, the door, and all over him. With all of the red, it looked like a gruesome murder scene. So some kids paint their walls with lipstick, others give themselves a haircut, but my little pooch seems to be content destroying things that she is not even supposed to touch.

This morning I was awakened by the jingling of her collar as she sat so angelically by my bedside waiting for me to wake up. As I got out of bed, I praised her for being such a good dog and not acting the fool to get me out of bed. But then, I walked up front...

To my great surprise, my living room rug was scattered with shards of CDs, random bits of paper, and a few other things that I'm still not really sure what they used to be. I keep a basket of random tv-related things under my tv, blockade in with books and baskets so that she can't get to them...or so I thought. Apparently, my little mischief-maker spent some time figuring out how to get into the basket and then made several trips back and forth to the rug with her new-found treasures...and then proceded to tear them into shreds.

Apart from the mess, there were no great losses, a few CDs to replace and papers to tape back together. My "While You Were Sleeping" DVD now has a nice imprint of her mouth...if only dogs needed dental records. I wonder if the police could use it to identify her if she ever ran away? Another of her victims was an instruction booklet on how to use her gentle-lead collar...she's always hated that thing...maybe this sparked the ransack.

I think this is one of the things I'm supposed to laugh about some day. Perhaps that will come after I've vacuumed all of the shards of broken CDs out of my rug. I suppose this is tame compared to what she could have done with a tube of lipstick...I don't even want to imagine that!